About the Book

When our daughter Nell was born, my wife, Elizabeth, gave me a sketchbook to fill with memories of our first year as a family. I took to the task with gusto, and I spent the first 12 months of her life filling pages with sketches of Nell’s ever-changing face and the people and places we saw along the way.

Eventually, Elizabeth pushed me to bring some of those illustrations to life in the form of a book. And given Nell’s name and our home’s proximity to a certain incessant neighborhood time keeper, the idea for Nell’s Bell was a bit of a no-brainer.

In May of 2024, when Nell was about 6 months old, I was lucky enough to have two months of parental leave. This book is dedicated to that uninterrupted time we spent together, to the joy of exploring the rich nature and history of Concord, MA, and to the steady background music of the First Parish church bell down the road.